WORD LISTS

Food and Drink Words with Arabic Roots

Most words come to us from the English language's Germanic roots, as well as a lot of Latin and Ancient Greek. There are, however, many English words that are actually derived from Arabic. Most of these have to do with chemistry, astronomy or mathematics - but here's a list of words to do with food and drink that have their roots in Arabic.

Scientific words entered Europe following the Renaissance, as many scientists and philosophers looked to the texts of the Arab World and their translations of classical works. The words in this list mainly reach English through Portuguese and Spanish, as Iberia was under the control of Arabs from 710 - 1492 AD. As the Portuguese and Spanish were in such close proximity to Arabic on a daily basis, many of the food and drink items featured here were first introduced to them, before they passed them on to the rest of Europe.

Originally meaning a substance produced from sublimation, this word comes from
al-kuhul in Arabic, which refers to a dark powder used as an eyeliner. It came to its current usage in English through the idea of a sublimated substance being the chemically pure spirit of solids or liquids.

What Americans call
eggplant the Brits call
aubergine. This came into the English language from the Arabic
al-badinjan through Catalan
alberginia, which the French borrowed to make
aubergine, later borrowed by the British.

So this isn't a drink, but it is something you can pour drinks from! Initially
gharraf, meaning 'something you serve from', it became
garrafa in Spanish and
carafe in French, before coming into English.

Another one named after a place,
tangerine comes from the port city of Tangier in Morocco. Britain imported the fruit from there in the early 1800s and gave it the name
tangerine orange, meaning 'orange from Tangier'.